When I was pastoring a large church in
England, I had some assistant pastors, and one
of them was a very, very fine young
man.
He came from an Assembly of God church.
I don't think I've ever heard a better
preacher.
I've never met a man who had more
intimacy with God.
He never went to Bible school, but his
father told me that from being about sixteen
or seventeen when he got saved, I think
about sixteen, at night he would come home
and he would take a concordance, and he
would take the Bible and he went up
into an attic that they had, and he
spent six hours every night, for years, with
God.
Didn't go with girlfriends, didn't go out to
shows, didn't go out to anything.
You know, when I used to listen to
that man, I used to think, well, I've
heard G.
Campbell Morgan, I've heard the greatest preachers in
the last fifty years, had some assistant pastors,
and one of them was a very, very
fine young man.
He came from an Assembly of God church.
I don't think I've ever heard a better
preacher.
I've never met a man who had more
intimacy with God.
He never went to Bible school, but his
father told me that from being about sixteen
or seventeen when he got saved, I think
about sixteen, at night he would come home
and he would take a concordance, and he
would take the Bible and he went up
into an attic that they had, and he
spent six hours every night, for years, with
God.
Didn't go with girlfriends, didn't go out to
shows, didn't go out to anything.
You know, when I used to listen to
that man, I used to think, well, I've
heard G.
Campbell Morgan, I've heard the greatest preachers in
the last fifty years, coming from England, America,
other countries.
There was a forum every Tuesday, and I
used to go to that forum, and here
he is, great giant preachers, and some were
great, no doubt.
You know, that man's intimacy with God didn't
come by reading a magazine, or a little
article in a church periodical, or sticking a
sign up outside his bedroom door.
He really walked with God, and if you
wanted a bit closer than that, we walked
through England.
John Wesley Rhodes through it, we walked through
it, every inch of the way, pulling a
little cart with our belongings in, and we
walked from the south coast up to the
north, and we walked back again, then from
the east coast to the west coast, and
preached in streets, and preached in bull rings,
and preached in fields, and slept in fields,
and slept in churches for years, on just
a sleeping bag.
And the more I lived with those men,
one or two of them I could have
done without, but there you see, you need
those kind of people too.
It's, it's, it's, somebody wrote a bit of
doggerel, you know, to dwell above with the
saints we love, that will be glory, glory.
But to dwell below with the saints we
know, well that's another story.
But that just about fits it in, doesn't
it?
And yet those people that are aggravating, those
people that are so opposite to us, are
the very people we need in our lives,
so that what is in us, God can
make it fructify, become fruitful, and, and the
spillover should go out to them.
Not that they infect us in any way,
but rather that we infect them.
But again, I'm saying this to say this
again, that, that, you've got to keep a,
particularly in this day when everything's falling apart,
I can't find anybody saying anything good about
this year, whether they're Christians or not.
And so we're to keep looking unto Jesus,
we do believe in spite of all the
theories of men, and the strange cults, and
all that's going on, that before too long,
you see, God's going to close the business
down.
And Jesus, this same Jesus, he's going to
come with ten thousand of his saints.
My goodness, you don't find that on bumper
stickers, do you?
Don't see anybody with an Audemars Piguet, with
a big bumper sticker back, when he comes
in majesty, with inflaming judgments.
Oh mercy, they'd burn your car if you
did that.
See, people don't like truth.
Now this is going to be a, this
is going to be a year of warfare,
I'm absolutely sure of that.
I believe it's going to be a tough
year for everybody, saints or sinners.
I believe God's judgments are going to be
in the earth, as they've never been in
the earth before.
And the thing is, are we prepared to,
are we equipped in the spirit to stand
against this?
Are we so in love with the Lord
Jesus that he can ask anything of us?
Wasn't there a king in France who, one
of his courtiers did something very wonderful, and
the king didn't know what to do, he
said, I don't know how to reward you,
but here you are, and he took a
sheet, and he wrote across the sheet at
the corner, he wrote his name.
And the king said, you take that to
anybody, and anything you write on that plain
sheet, you shall be given.
I wouldn't like to risk that.
Just to give a man a plain sheet,
fill in whatever you want, the king's signature
is at the bottom, the king didn't order
you to have everything that you've asked on
that sheet.
But let me ask you, since many of
you are so young, would you like to
give the Lord a plain sheet at the
beginning of 1983, and say, Lord, you fill
it in, I've put my name at the
bottom, here I am, I'm your love slave,
I'm your disciple, I'm willing to take up
my cross, I'm willing to take up the
burden nobody else wants, it's too heavy for
them.
Five minutes inside eternity, again, we'll all wish
we'd been more spiritual than we are.
We'll all wish that we'd gone through with
a cross that somehow we shed somewhere on
the way.
There's going to have to come some heroism
back into Christianity.
It doesn't necessarily mean dying and burning at
the stake, it may mean that.
It's that horrible little word again, discipline.
Where you don't let TV rule you, you
don't let other people rule you, whether you're
in a group or you're not in a
group, whether you live in a home or
you live in one of the ministries round
here, but you live according to the revelation
God has given you.
And if God tells you to be up
at four o'clock and pray and intercede,
well, do it.
If he tells you to do some other
thing and he reveals it to you personally,
well, do it.
I'm not asking you to strike and be
rebellious against the existing system, but God makes
individuals.
And he made John again in the very
vortex, if you can use that word, of
the fire, right in the crucible.
But what does he want to do?
Well, he wants to do what the old
hymn says, thy dross to consume and thy
goat to refine.
God is never capricious, God doesn't play games.
We see through a glass darkly, he sees
the end from the beginning, we don't, we
don't know the next step very often.
And in the darkness we seem to stumble,
but he has a design.
And I believe he has a design for
every life.
Here he takes John through this great experience.
There must have been moments when John felt
he was coming apart when he sees the
world and the great tribulation, when he sees
Antichrist, when he sees all these forces.
Well, he wouldn't want to read much of
this book to a five-year-old child
or a ten-year-old child.
And as I said to you before, I'm
scared, in the right sense of the word,
that when I get to the judgment seat
with a thousand billion people looking on, and
I step up before the throne and Jesus
is there, this same amazing Christ, no longer
gentle Jesus, meek and mild, no buddy-buddying.
I hear people say, when I see Jesus,
I'm going to say this.
I say, when you see him, you'll be
dumb.
Here is a man who knew him better
than anyone else, and he was dumb in
his presence.
I don't want him to say, I had
many things to tell you, but you couldn't
bear them.
I couldn't get your ear, you were listening
to so much junk and talk.
Some of it's good talk, but again, the
good is the enemy of the best in
the Christian life.
It isn't usual that the devil attempts a
Christian to be drunk or become immoral.
He just wants you to fool your life
away, fool your time away.
Why not make a vow by the grace
of God that you'll redeem the time?
To redeem means to buy back, to buy
up the opportunity.
They come to us all.
And yet God permits this man to have
this marvelous unveiling of his son.
To lift the curtain and show him the
things which will shortly come to pass.
The rising of empires, the falling of empires.
Corruption in the churches.
Read the seven churches and all the deficiencies
they had.
And yet some of them were as sound
in doctrine as possible, but they were going
through a ritual.
And the complaint that Jesus has, not that
they were wrong in their theology.
He says, but you've left.
Not you've lost, we usually say we've lost
our first.
It doesn't say that, it says you left.
Deliberately you came to a fork in the
road where you had to make a supreme
sacrifice for Jesus.
Or go the other way, and so you
sacrificed Jesus.
Not we left our first love, not we
lost our first love, we left it, we
deliberately made a choice.
Which was a second class choice.
Now there's this advantage again that, as I
say, in a sense the new year isn't
new and in another sense it is.
And yet Paul says, forgetting those things which
are behind.
You know what we usually do, we kind
of make a summary of all our failures.
Or let's forget them all.
Why not forget all our successes.
Our successes often become a greater handicap than
our failures.
We've reached a plateau.
Last year was the best I ever had.
I read my Bible more, I prayed more,
I won more.
So what?
There's so much land ahead to be possessed.
So many revelations to be given, so many
burdens to carry.
Life's short.
And I guess you think you've a long
way to go, but you wouldn't know that.
It's short.
And I don't say every Christian dies victorious,
I don't think they do.
I think a lot of them say, you
know, if I could have just five years
back, I'd do this, I'd do that, I'd
do this.
The Lord says, no, you said that two
or three times.
You went to the altar so many times
and made vows and you forgot all about
them, you broke them and there they are.
So you don't get any more time.
Oh, that this year may be a year
of new intimacy for me, for you, with
the Lord Jesus Christ.
That we see him in his glory.
He says, I turn to see the voice.
That doesn't sound right, you can't see a
voice, can you?
No, but you know what it means?
There's someone speaking here who is so different.
When he saw him in all his stunning
majesty, he doesn't say, Lord, you look so
beautiful.
No, I haven't seen you for so long.
He says, his eyes were like a flame
of fire, his feet were like burnished brass,
his face is like the sun in its
strength.
His tongue was a sharp twedged sword, his
hair was as white as snow.
Well, that's enough to kill you anyhow.
And yet there are progressive revelations.
If you'll walk with God, you'll find that
there are things he'll unveil this coming year
that you've never thought about in the last
two or three or four or five years.
And I'm urging you to do that.
I'm urging you to make this year a
year of intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Of reading his word, hearing his word as
it says.
And the promise is given that those who
keep his word, it's not just hearing, it's
not just knowing, but it's keeping that word
that receives the reward.
Okay, we're going to pray again.
And we don't put limits on prayer.
We ask you if you've got a burdened
heart to unburden it in the presence of
the Lord.
Pray for your church at home.
We have Brother Clauson with us, a young
man that's been with us a number of,
I don't know, a couple of years, maybe
on and off.
And he has gone to, I think he's
gone to the Philippines.
We have a young man from the Philippines
here tonight.
And he was telling us how God is
blessing that country and we're glad to hear
that.
George from Africa tells us that God is
using, working in Africa.
Somebody asked me not long ago, and I
saw it also in a magazine, and somebody
said, Why are the breathings of God in
these days all on foreign countries, not on
this country?
The best revivals, the biggest revivals are outside
of America.
We have the biggest shows.
We have the most glamorous gospel, but we
don't have the most effective gospel.
And this risen, exalted Christ, if he was
exalted, if we saw him in his glory
and his majesty, every meeting we go to
again, we'd either go out with tears running
down our faces that there are so many
lost people, or we go with radiance on
our face, we've seen the risen Christ again,
and whatever he asks, he can have out
of our lives.
This generation of Christians, this generation of Christians
is responsible for this generation of lost people.
So you better tuck that away in your
mind.
And you have a part to play in
it, and I have a part to play
in it.
If you have no vision, ask God for
vision.
If you've backslidden during the past weeks, confess
it.
If you like the sports page more than
the sacred page, confess it.
If you're wandering in the wilderness, confess it.
Because if we confess, he's faithful and just
to forgive us, and then he comes and
he puts us on course, that we might
live for his glory.